


Nuclear Transfer

by Vintar



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Android Wheatley, Clones, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:25:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/pseuds/Vintar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the plural of "Wheatley" is "Tremendous Disaster". For the Portal kink meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nuclear Transfer

At first it had been great. Finally he’d had someone who understood him, someone who knew how tough he had it, someone who laughed at his jokes instead of just laughing at _him_. He’d thought that the other fellow was charming, maybe even a bit of a looker to boot. They’d wandered the facility, two good chums surveying their domain, and it had been utterly brilliant.

An hour into it, however, everything was starting to go wrong.

"Look," Wheatley said, "I’m the one that activated you, so that means I’m more senior. You should be the one to have to check the humans."

The android sitting at his desk— their desk?— did not seem swayed by this. "That just means that you’re older, worn down. I’m younger, fresher, brighter! You go down there, and I’ll stay up here and man the controls, hit the buttons, all that good stuff."

Wheatley adjusted his glasses and glared. The fact that he was glaring at an exact duplicate of himself was not doing his brain any favours. It felt a little like staring into a funhouse mirror that argued back, and just like a funhouse mirror, his duplicate looked exactly like him, but somehow… off. Surely his hair looked better than that? Surely he stood straighter than that- the other Wheatley had absolutely terrible posture! Surely his smile couldn't possibly look like _that_.

Over the course of the day, Wheatley had taken to double-checking his reflection in nearby shiny surfaces. He was sure that he looked better than the duplicate. Pretty sure, anyway.

"Look, it needs to be done! Get to work."

" _You_ get to work." The other Wheatley glared back at him. It was a terrible attempt at a glare, Wheatley decided, all sulky and petulant. The other Wheatley was clearly trying to look tough, but all it did was make him seem like an angry teenager. Wheatley was not the bullying type, but staring at that face made something angry deep inside him flare up, and he found himself fighting an overwhelming urge to kick his duplicate in the shins.

"Look, let’s be sensible about this. All those in favour of you being the one to do our job, raise your hand."

He raised his hand. The duplicate did not.

The duplicate sneered. "All those in favour of you doing it instead, raise your hands."

Wheatley kept his hand down. The duplicate threw his into the air.

The duplicate was terrible, Wheatley decided in a rush. A terrible, mean, stupid, funny-looking prototype version of himself from before they ironed out the kinks. It was like that with all sorts of programming, wasn’t it? Beta versions and all that? Trust Aperture to keep their wonky beta versions laying around where anyone could sort of accidentally on purpose turn them back on, instead of throwing them in the trash where they clearly belonged.

"Well, that didn’t help. It might’ve if you’d voted _properly_ , but I guess that’s just too much to hope for. From you. Because you’re terrible. Just in case you weren’t picking up what I was getting at, there."

"While you were busy being snide-"

"Snide? Snide?! That’s rich, coming from-"

"- _I’ve_ thought up a solution."

The duplicate crossed his arms and looked smug. The shin-kicking urge rose up in Wheatley again like a particularly tempting iceberg. The only thing stopping him from crossing the line from relatively restrained sniping into actual violence was a vague prediction of a chilly, passive-aggressive future, full of lines drawn down the middle of things and sarcastic pretend politeness.

At this point, all Wheatley wanted was a lie-down, and, if possible, some sort of time machine, so that he could go back to when he’d thought about activating the duplicate and smack the stupid out of himself. Did Aperture have any of those, tucked away somewhere? They certainly seemed to have everything else.

The duplicate sat there, stubbornly. The silence stretched out between them. Eventually, Wheatley caved; it was either that or having to keep dealing with Captain Smuglord of Smugtown.

"Okay. Fine," he said. "Share this so-called solution, if you would be so kind."

The duplicate smirked at his tiny victory and adjusted his glasses, a gesture clearly designed to make him look intellectual, but, Wheatley decided, just made him look like a complete and utter tosser. "We wake up another one."

 

 

The third Wheatley they woke was a version immediately previous to the duplicate. He looked pretty much the same as his newer versions, except stretched out even more, and, Wheatley thought, even weirder looking. Surely ears weren’t meant to stick out that much, and weren’t eyes supposed to be a little smaller?

During the rebooting process, Wheatley caught the duplicate peering nervously at his own face in the reflective surface of the android rebooting device, and felt a small stab of malicious pleasure.

When the third Wheatley (Wheatley mentally labeled him Lanky) had got his bearings, the two of them politely explained what they wanted him to do.

"I don’t bloody think so, mates," said Lanky, which was completely unfair. All he had to do was do check up on all the humans, look at the bioinformatics panels, pretend to understand what they meant, et cetera et cetera, nothing difficult at all. Lanky was clearly just plain lazy. "I should get a vote as well."

The duplicate frowned and looked at Wheatley. "That’s fair, innit? Can’t really send a bloke to do a job without letting him have a say in it. Probably. Can we?"

"Here’s what we’ll do," said Wheatley, rallying under his sudden seniority. "At the count of three, everyone point at whoever you want to be the one to check the humans. Diplomacy in action, and all that. Okay, here we go. Voting fingers at the ready, limber with justice. One. Two. Three—"

It was probably a logic problem, Wheatley decided. Something like that. He’d never paid a lot of attention to human logic problems, mostly because the first time they’d hooked him up to _Her_ and asked about foxes, chickens, and grain, She’d released a mutagen into the animal testing wing and the scientists had had to spend a week battling the giant roosters in the hallways.

Wheatley had pointed at Lanky. Lanky had pointed at the duplicate. The duplicate, an android of _no moral fiber whatsoever_ , had pointed at Wheatley.

"What the bloody hell are you doing? I thought we were sending _him_!"

"Yeah, well." The duplicate looked shifty. "You thought wrong. Which isn’t a novelty, honestly."

 _Traitor!_ Wheatley thought. _Back-stabber! Double-crosser! Funny-looking Judas!_ He settled for saying "You’re a mean piece of work, you know that?"

The duplicate’s eyes narrowed. "Okay, yeah, sure. If we’re playing our cards straight, here’s mine: I just don’t like you."

"You what? How can you not like me?!" Wheatley could hear his own voice growing alarmingly shrill, but couldn’t seem to stop it. "I am you, you back-stabbing imbecile!"

"Steady on, steady on," said Lanky, placatingly. "That’s a bit harsh, innit?"

"Oh, who asked you, Legs?"

All three glared at each other over their raised fingers in what may have been the world’s strangest Mexican standoff.

"Okay," Lanky suggested, breaking the silence. "I’ve got an idea…"

 

 

The fourth Wheatley turned out to be a skinny blond in a waistcoat. The duplicate turned on some hitherto unknown reserve of charm, and before Wheatley knew what had happened, the two of them had formed a team. In reaction, Lanky stuck with Wheatley, and the vote came out to two each for Wheatley and the duplicate. The stalemate deepened.

Somehow, they all came to the same solution.

 

 

The fifth Wheatley they woke turned out to not be a Wheatley at all, and everyone blamed each other for reading the barcode incorrectly as the twitchy young man ran around and gibbered about the moon.

The sixth Wheatley awoke to find himself being pulled in two different directions by his overalls and got entirely the wrong idea.

The seventh Wheatley, a pleasant gap-toothed fellow, took one look at the burgeoning political tension and abstained from voting. At least, that’s what Wheatley assumed afterwards; he was in a headlock at the time, and trying to throttle the duplicate over the android resurrection controls.

The eight, ninth, and tenth Wheatleys, all blond and skinny, formed a new political bloc with Lanky as their head. In retaliation, the rest of the Wheatleys formed a temporary pact to counter their votes.

It could have been the start of a open and transparent political system.

It was not.

 

 

The rebooting machine was starting to make alarming grinding noises. At least, Wheatley thought it was the machine; it was hard to tell over the din of shouting, shoving, and the occasional high-pitched shriek as one Wheatley pushed another too far and received a kick to the shins. A Wheatley was thumping wildly at a variety of buttons at the control panel, another Wheatley was trying to wallop him with a spinny chair, and around the two of them a dozen or so other Wheatleys were either dragging him away or trying to push him closer to his intended victim.

There was a wail from above as a Wheatley was shoved from his management rail chair. He fell into a brawling pile of Wheatleys, and even from across the room, Wheatley could hear the resulting chorus of "man alive!"s. In his trail, a hastily markered "height makes right!! vote 1 for 6’7"!!!" banner fluttered dejectedly to the floor.

Wheatley hid (not cowered, _definitely_ not cowered) behind a desk. He was sure that he was starting to smell smoke.

Someone sat down heavily next to him. "This is all a bit much, innit?"

This Wheatley was… average. He wasn’t tall and skinny, or short and round; his hair wasn’t stark blond, or jet black, or red or purple or blue. Something about him was… weird. Wheatley, a few too many mirror-image fist-fights past the point of normal polite interaction, stared blankly at him.

"I mean, they warn you about hostile work environments and all, but they never covered this. Presumably. Might have missed that day of orientation, that might be it." The weird Wheatley (though that was quite unfair, because at that very moment Wheatley could see at least two different Wheatleys with their heads stuck in wastepaper bins, one Wheatley trying to defend his desk fort from a pack of roaming Wheatleys with a mop, and one Wheatley— oh, there it was— on fire) yawned widely and cracked his neck. Suddenly, Wheatley knew.

"You’re a _human_ , aren’t you?"

"Yeah, for what it’s worth. Tell you what, I don’t think them over there are even looking at what they’re reanimating. They’re just hitting all the buttons! Madness. When I woke up they’d defrosted a freezer worth of hamburgers. Didn’t stop the lot of them from trying to get them to vote."

"But you’re… the first one?"

The weird Wheatley thought for a moment, scratching at his stubble. "Well, there were other Wheatleys before me, obviously, but not of the robot type. Of the dad type, and the grandpa type, and so forth. Less interesting than your average robot Wheatley, honestly, but on the plus side, much cheaper- always good- and also less likely to burst into flames. Generally. There was that incident with my uncle once, but I have the suspicion that an awful lot of port was involved, and besides, the skin grafts cleared it right up." He eyed Wheatley. "You one of the newer ones? I like what they’ve done with the nose, never was a big fan of it, to tell the truth. I got put in the freezer at about series three, you see. They thought they’d put me on ice until they got the bugs worked out."

There was a hideous shriek across the room as a Wheatley stabbed another in the hand with a pencil. Wheatley tried not to look. "Uh. How’d that go? Just asking. Not insinuating anything. Not that there’s anything to insinuate, or anything."

The human Wheatley eyed the carnage over the top of their desk refuge. "Going to take a stab in the dark here, just guessing, but I’m going to guess ‘not too well’. I tell you what, that’s what you get for choosing your AI brain model with rock-paper-scissors. I never got on well with my brothers, you know. This looks like a picnic compared to some of the Wheatley family Christmasses, let me tell you."

Wheatley tried to focus. It was quite difficult. He felt a strange sort of awe, sitting next to his long-lost ancestor…

"Okay," he said. "You worked here, right? Doing science, er, stuff?"

Human Wheatley nodded. "For years and years. Years ago, anyway." A pained look crossed his face. "Ah, I never returned those library books! How long have I been suspended? Man alive, I’m probably a felon by now. Aperture’s most wanted, grand theft booko. Tell you what, I never even read ‘em! A pointless crime."

…awe, but mostly superiority: this human was _incredibly stupid_. Between the nose and the brains, Wheatley was an improvement in every way! It was a good feeling.

He could hear the reanimation machine making a serious grinding noise, and there was a series of screams coming from the direction of the controls. He got back on track.

"So you know about the projects and things they were making here, right? Devices? Creations? Gadgets, gizmos, all that good stuff?"

"Sure, sure. Gotta say, not so much anything that could be called ‘good stuff’, though. The closest thing to good that my division came up with was hamburger night." He squinted through the smoke at a particular explosion of commotion. "The bulk of which seems to have been co-opted as voters by the _Women Can Be Wheatley Too!_ party. Huh. Kind of wish the android division rolled that particular design out before I went into suspended animation. Is that weird? I think that might be a bit weird."

Wheatley placed his hands on the sides of human Wheatley’s face, and gently pivoted him away from the Wheatlettes. "Mate, I need you to do me a favour."

"Sure, sure. Least I could do. Well, technically the least I could do would be to lie there in suspended animation for however many years, but since I’ve already crossed that off the list, ask away."

Wheatley lowered his voice. "I need you to find one thing for me…"

 

 

Wheatley meandered through the corridors. There was little to do when he wasn’t tending to the humans, and he’d found that going for walks made it look like he had something important to do. When you didn’t look like you had anything to do, others tried to take advantage. "Wheatley, can you stop doing that?" "Wheatley, can you do your bloody job?" "Wheatley, help, everything's on fire!" Typical Aperture; a bloke couldn’t get a moment’s rest around the place.

He hadn’t wandered through this part of the facility before, though. Everything looked old and worn. He brushed the dust off of a doorplate.

 _Android Storage_. Well well well. That would be a turn up for the books, wouldn’t it? Someone else to help around the place, someone to have a chat to, someone to go on walks with him…

An Aperture Science Time Dilution Portal opened on the wall in front of him, and as he stared in astonishment, an exact replica of himself leant out and punched him in the face.

"What— who— ow!" Wheatley, sprawled out on the floor, stared up at his doppelganger in horror and rage. "You absolute bastard!"

The Wheatley leaning through the portal gave a whoop of joy and pointed an accusatory finger at him. "Yes! _Exactly_."

Without any further explanation, the portal closed.

After a long, long silence, Wheatley silently got up, adjusted his glasses, and started the walk back to his office.

Maybe being by himself wasn’t so bad after all.


End file.
